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oacapture 1.0.0 released

This is a little rushed as I want to get it out before taking a break, but it’s time for the 1.0.0 release. I think we’re at that point now. So, what’s changed?

The bad news is that things have become fairly hairy with the build tree, even compared with previous releases. This is partly to incorporate new libraries for cameras based on Touptek hardware and partly because a bleeding edge release of libdc1394 is required to support some of the newer Point Grey IIDC-over-USB cameras. The build works for me, but it might be really quite painful on other systems.

Changes include…

Implementation of a GPS-based camera control and timer mechanism to timestamp (FITS) files. This uses some bespoke hardware that hopefully I’ll be able to talk more about later, but the intention is to be able to accurately timestamp images for occultations

Allow sub-millisecond exposure times

ASI camera library update (to the May 2016 release)

Add support for Touptek cameras

Update support for newer ZWO cameras

Enable the ASI2 interface

Allow UtVideo codec to be disabled

Load the shared library for the Point Grey GigE cameras at runtime, so a single executable should work fine whether you have the library or not

Ditto with the Touptek cameras

Fix “directory not writable” error with FITS/TIFF files

Fix problem with 16-bit SER file format

Allow capture to MOV and TIFF files from raw colour if the output data is demosaicked

And there are a few other bugfixes too.

The ASI2 interface I’m not entirely happy with. It probably should still be considered experimental at this stage. Neither would I describe the Toupcam support as “complete” as there are one or two areas I’m not entirely happy about because the documentation isn’t 100% clear. I’m (still) waiting for a response from Touptek support on those. It’s pretty much there though.

Building releases is a slow process, so I’ve initially uploaded the OSX release and the sources. I’ll add binaries for Linux systems as I get them built. This may take a little while as the installation is getting rather more complex now.